Nevada Desert Experience is a name for the movement to stop U.S. nuclear weapons testing that came into use in the middle 1980s. It is also the name of an anti-nuclear organization which continues to create public events to question the morality and intelligence of the U.S. nuclear weapons program, with a main focus on the United States Department of Energy's (DOE) Nevada National Security Site (formerly called the Nevada Test Site or the Nevada Proving Ground).
In the spring of 1982, activists working for social justice, environmental preservation, and international peace organized a six-week peace vigil at the entrance to the Nevada Test Site, about 60 miles (100 km) from Las Vegas, Nevada. In 1983, they repeated the vigil, calling it the Lenten Desert Experience. [1] [2] This anarchist group of Christian organizers decided that the program had been successful enough to start an organization, which has been a conscientiously interfaith aspect of the nuclear weapons abolition movement. They named it Nevada Desert Experience, or NDE, because of the work within the prayer-actions for peace that included learning to appreciate the Mojave and the Great Basin Deserts of North America. Organizers (primarily ethnically non-Indigenous) believed that appreciation of the beauty and power of the natural environment, coupled with a universal code of ethics (the Golden Rule) organically leads humans to make a stand for peace and environmental justice. [3] In 1989, NDE organizers founded Pace e Bene [4] to amplify the movement for peacemaking beyond the aspect of a global existential threat of nuclear weapons. The first ten years of NDE were the most synergistic and spiritually revolutionary [5] for North American Peace Activists. In the early 21st century, the annual events of NevadaDesertExperience.org leaned more on "desert spirituality" (less Christocentric as in the 20th century) and expanded to resist robotic (weaponized drones) warfare.
The movement's immediate goal of ending nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site was met in 1992, when President George H. W. Bush signed a moratorium on underground nuclear weapons tests. [6] The abolition movement, led by NDE and the Western Shoshone-based Shundahai Network were sparked back into action with the renewal of non-nuclear (yet still radioactive) explosions at the Nevada Test Site in 1997. These "subcritical" bombs use fissile materials which do not reach the self-sustaining chain reaction of a typical nuclear bomb. The bombs are designed by Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, whereby the data collected can be fed to computers to simulate full-scale nuclear explosions for the US National Security Agency (NSA)[ citation needed ] and DOE. Their explosive yield is low, and small amounts of radiation may be released. Because each sub-critical experiment costs roughly US$20 million and much time from the humans working within the nuclear weapons management industry, the tests indicate a strong continued U.S. Government interest in favor of nuclear weapons. As a spiritually active movement, NDE seeks peace and nonviolence. The founders of NDE sought to use the activist tactics [7] of Jesus Christ and quickly expanded ecumenically and inter-faithfully. Therefore, NDE continues to work for deep ecological sensitivities and social peacemaking, with one goal being to clean up and contain the contamination created by nearly 80 years of nuclear testing in Nevada and Western Shoshone country.
From 1986 through 1994, two years after the United States put a hold on full-scale nuclear weapons testing, 536 demonstrations were held at the Nevada Test Site involving 37,488 participants and 15,740 arrests, according to government records. [8] In the fall of 1986, the Peace Caucus of the American Public Health Association (APHA) organized a protest at the site with over 500 APHA members participating. Over 100 APHA members, along with Carl Sagan, Victor R. Sidel and H. Jack Geiger, were arrested. [9] In January, 1987, the actor Martin Sheen and 71 other anti-nuclear protesters were arrested at the Nevada Test Site in a demonstration marking the 36th anniversary of the first nuclear test there. [10] On February 5, 1987, more than 400 people were arrested, when they tried to enter the nation's nuclear proving grounds after nearly 2,000 demonstrators held a rally to protest nuclear weapons testing. Those arrested included the astronomer Carl Sagan, privacy advocate Phil Zimmermann, [11] and the actors Kris Kristofferson, Martin Sheen, and Robert Blake. Five Democratic members of Congress attended the rally: Thomas J. Downey, Mike Lowry, Jim Bates, Leon E. Panetta and Barbara Boxer. [12] [13] In April 2007 Martin Sheen among others was arrested. [14]
In protest over UAV attacks in Pakistan and the perceived extremely high danger of harming civilians, [15] [16] [17] in an event sponsored by Nevada Desert Experience, Friar Louis Vitale, Kathy Kelly, Stephen Kelly SJ, John Dear, and others were arrested outside Creech Air Force Base (adjacent to the Nevada National Security Site) on Wednesday April 9, 2009. [18] Subsequent monthly protests have been ongoing and conducted by a number of organizations including Code Pink. [19]
Nuclear disarmament is the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons. Its end state can also be a nuclear-weapons-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated. The term denuclearization is also used to describe the process leading to complete nuclear disarmament.
The Nevada National Security Sites, popularized as the Nevada Test Site (NTS) until 2010, is a reservation of the United States Department of Energy located in the southeastern portion of Nye County, Nevada, about 65 mi (105 km) northwest of the city of Las Vegas.
The Committee for Non-Violent Action (CNVA) was an American anti-war group, formed in 1957 to resist the US government's program of nuclear weapons testing. It was one of the first organizations to employ nonviolent direct action to protest against the nuclear arms race.
The Plowshares movement is an anti-nuclear weapons and Christian pacifist movement that advocates active resistance to war. The group often practices a form of protest that involves the damaging of weapons and military property. The movement gained notoriety in the early 1980s when several members damaged nuclear warhead nose cones and were subsequently convicted. The name refers to the text of prophet Isaiah who said that swords shall be beaten into plowshares.
The Dann Sisters, Mary Dann (1923–2005) and Carrie Dann (1932–2021), were Western Shoshone elders who were spiritual leaders, ranchers, and cultural, spiritual rights and land rights activists. They challenged the federal government over uses of their tribe's traditional land, in a case that reached the United States Supreme Court as U.S. v. Dann.
Creech Air Force Base is a United States Air Force (USAF) command and control facility in Clark County, Nevada used "to engage in daily Overseas Contingency Operations …of remotely piloted aircraft systems which fly missions across the globe." In addition to an airport, the military installation has the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Battlelab, associated aerial warfare ground equipment, and unmanned aerial vehicles of the type used in Afghanistan and Iraq. Creech is the aerial training site for the USAF Thunderbirds and "is one of two emergency divert airfields" for the Nevada Test and Training Range.
John Dear is an American Catholic priest, peace activist, lecturer, and author of 35 books on peace and nonviolence. He has spoken on peace around the world, organized hundreds of demonstrations against war, injustice and nuclear weapons and been arrested 85 times in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience against war, injustice, poverty, nuclear weapons and environmental destruction.
Mary Ann Wright is a retired United States Army colonel and retired U.S. State Department official, known for her outspoken opposition to the Iraq War. She received the State Department Award for Heroism in 1997, after helping to evacuate several thousand people during the civil war in Sierra Leone.
Kathy Kelly is an American peace activist, pacifist and author, one of the founding members of Voices in the Wilderness, and, until the campaign closed in 2020, a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. As part of peace team work in several countries, she has traveled to Iraq twenty-six times, notably remaining in combat zones during the early days of both US–Iraq wars.
Corbin Harney was an elder and spiritual leader of the Newe people. Harney reportedly inspired the creation in 1994 of the Shundahai Network, which works for environmental justice and nuclear disarmament. The Shundahai Network plays a key role in organizing non-violent civil disobedience aimed at bringing about the closure of the Nevada Test Site, used for testing nuclear weapons, which is located on Western Shoshone land.
Louis Vitale, OFM, was an American Franciscan friar, peace activist, and a co-founder of Nevada Desert Experience. His religious beliefs led him to participate in civil disobedience actions at peace demonstrations and acts of religious witness over 40 years. In the name of peace, Vitale has been arrested more than 400 times. Vitale stated that Francis of Assisi, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. provided him with inspiration.
The anti-nuclear movement in the United States consists of more than 80 anti-nuclear groups that oppose nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and/or uranium mining. These have included the Abalone Alliance, Clamshell Alliance, Committee for Nuclear Responsibility, Nevada Desert Experience, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Plowshares Movement, United Steelworkers of America (USWA) District 31, Women Strike for Peace, Nukewatch, and Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Some fringe aspects of the anti-nuclear movement have delayed construction or halted commitments to build some new nuclear plants, and have pressured the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to enforce and strengthen the safety regulations for nuclear power plants. Most groups in the movement focus on nuclear weapons.
Anti-nuclear organizations may oppose uranium mining, nuclear power, and/or nuclear weapons. Anti-nuclear groups have undertaken public protests and acts of civil disobedience which have included occupations of nuclear plant sites. Some of the most influential groups in the anti-nuclear movement have had members who were elite scientists, including several Nobel Laureates and many nuclear physicists.
A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world peace. Some of the methods used to achieve these goals include advocacy of pacifism, nonviolent resistance, diplomacy, boycotts, peace camps, ethical consumerism, supporting anti-war political candidates, supporting legislation to remove profits from government contracts to the military–industrial complex, banning guns, creating tools for open government and transparency, direct democracy, supporting whistleblowers who expose war crimes or conspiracies to create wars, demonstrations, and political lobbying. The political cooperative is an example of an organization which seeks to merge all peace-movement and green organizations; they may have diverse goals, but have the common ideal of peace and humane sustainability. A concern of some peace activists is the challenge of attaining peace when those against peace often use violence as their means of communication and empowerment.
Anti-nuclear protests began on a small scale in the U.S. as early as 1946 in response to Operation Crossroads. Large scale anti-nuclear protests first emerged in the mid-1950s in Japan in the wake of the March 1954 Lucky Dragon Incident. August 1955 saw the first meeting of the World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, which had around 3,000 participants from Japan and other nations. Protests began in Britain in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the United Kingdom, the first Aldermaston March, organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, took place in 1958. In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, about 50,000 women brought together by Women Strike for Peace marched in 60 cities in the United States to demonstrate against nuclear weapons. In 1964, Peace Marches in several Australian capital cities featured "Ban the Bomb" placards.
George Willoughby was a Quaker activist who advocated for world peace, and conducted nonviolent protests against war and preparations for war.
The application of nuclear technology, both as a source of energy and as an instrument of war, has been controversial.
Megan Gillespie Rice S.H.C.J. was an American nuclear disarmament activist, Catholic nun, and former missionary. She was notable for illegally entering the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, at the age of 82, with two fellow activists of the Transform Now Plowshares group. The action was a nuclear disarmament protest referred to as "the biggest security breach in the history of the nation's atomic complex."
Richard "Rick" Paul Springer was an American anti-nuclear activist. He was best known for his arrest after smashing a crystal statue in front of former President Ronald Reagan at a luncheon in 1992, and his subsequent imprisonment on various charges.
Anti-nuclear protests in the United States have occurred since the development of nuclear power plants in the United States. Examples include Clamshell Alliance protests at Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant, Abalone Alliance protests at Diablo Canyon Power Plant, and those following the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite magazine}}: Cite magazine requires |magazine= (help)Pilgrimage Through a Burning World, by Ken Butigan, Chronicles and discusses the political and religious aspects of the nonviolent protest against nuclear testing called the Nevada Desert Experience. 2003, 256 pp., paper.
